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Creating Goals With Soul
There’s something about devastation and tragedy that lights a fire in the soul. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, which has uplifted our daily lives and placed us in a different reality, are things stirring and bubbling up in you? This is a great time to reflect: dig into your goals to see if they still ring true to your soul. By answering the questions in this post you will understand how to create goals with soul: accomplishments that are meaningful to you!
Death is a Catalyst for Change
Let’s talk about death. It’s an interesting time we are in; many people die every day from viruses, illnesses, and injuries. But a pandemic, one disease spread across the entire planet, shows us just how vulnerable we are as human beings. Sure, some of us (the healthy and the young) have a lower chance of getting it, but it doesn’t take away the fact that many have died and are dying from it. This shouldn’t be something to fear too much about. Death is something that happens in the world.
At some point, we all cease to exist. We all know this, but we don’t always feel it so close to home. I believe the awareness that we will die can propel us to live vivaciously! By this I mean, the awareness of death can jolt us out of a slumber to the realization that in order to live a life that is exciting, deep, and significant we must go after that which we desire.
Not only does physical death around us cause us to consider how we are living, but the very ending of a way of life does this too. Death can be a slow process or it can be quick, speaking both literally and metaphorically. Our old ways of existing are over. We can never go back, but we can honor what was and still is important to us and bring it into our daily actions now.
Aligning Outer Goals with Inner Desires
Before we get into some reflection questions, let’s look at what desire means. I do not mean superficial, fleeting pleasure: such as sex, food, or quick thrills. These are can be imagined as surface level desires that don’t actually fulfill the deep cravings we possess. Although, sex, food, and thrills can be infused with deep meaning where they do fulfill deeper desires (i.e., making love with someone who is special to you where you let go and the chemistry between the two of you feeds your soul).
To have goals and desires in different areas of life (friendships, romantic relationships, self-care, health and fitness, hobbies, social activism, family, community, business/career, etc.) that truly fulfill us, not only something we check off, they have to connect to our deepest feelings and thoughts, not only our bodily sensations.
What stirs below the surface of who we say we are in the world, is a realm of thoughts, desires, feelings, memories, fantasies that all play into how we gain meaning throughout our life. To experience fulfillment in our lives, our actions have to connect with what we think and feel is meaningful. It is a meeting of inner and outer realms, an alignment of external goals with internal desires that provides a sense of fulfillment and a feeling of being alive.
For example, one can gain pleasure from driving in a car with their hand out the window, because of what that act means to them. Possibly, it is the love for the feeling of freedom. Maybe it reminds them of a special memory or a person that was important to them. The simple act of riding down a road with a hand out the window could give so much pleasure due to many reasons, but it is the reason along with the action that truly fulfills the desire.
Getting to the Heart of What You Desire
You may be thinking, how do I know what I truly desire?
Well, what lights you up?
What little things bring you joy?
What have you always wanted?
What are you curious about?
These questions will prime you for the following ones.
There lies within you a youthful spirit, one that intuits many possibilities for your life. This youthful side of you has an unquenched thirst for what life has to give. It is the part of you that day dreams. You can tap into this youthful spirit to gauge what is possible in your life. Now this youthful spirit needs a heavy motivator to bring what she envisions into reality. (I’m personifying–giving this quality of youthful pizzazz a pronoun). She needs motivation to go for it, to seize opportunities, to create a life she loves.
This motivation is death: whether that is the physical death of our life, an inevitable separation (i.e., divorce, job loss, a friend moves away), or an ending of some sort (growing up, moving to another city, changing careers, an old way of living is gone). Things change all the time. The opportunity to play, to love, to create with what you have right now will seize to exist at some point. The time to live is now, and it always exists with death.
How to Create Goals with Soul
I want you to pull out a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions. Doing the work is important if you want to discover your deeply felt goals!
1. If you knew you were going to die what would you want to DO with your remaining time?
What would you want to EXPERIENCE?
What would you want to SAY?
What would you want to FEEL?
2. WHAT are your current goals? How long have you been carrying these goals?
And go a step further…
3. WHY do you want to complete these goals? Are they avenues for you to experience what you wrote down in question 1?
This is such an essential question. If you want to have a life that is meaningful to you, you must ask these questions of yourself. So often, we don’t stop to ask why we want something. We just think it will bring me happiness. But will it really?
I’m gonna give you a hard truth: nothing will bring you happiness unless it aligns with what you deeply desire. That is, you will never experience happiness, if your goal is not meaningful to you in one way or another. For example, a goal could be to complete a 5k run. You will not feel happy during or after completing it if health and fitness is not a deeply held value. Now, if health is important to you because it means you get to live longer and enjoy more time here on Earth, or if being fit enough to complete a 5k means you have overcome something great (obesity, depression, or simply stagnation) then the small successes leading up to the big completion will be inherently enjoyable. The goal is not merely something to check off. It is important to YOU. So spend some time with this question!
Okay now that you have some stuff to work with…
4. HOW can I incorporate the desires from question 1 into my life? What goals can I create that will allow me to experience what I desire?
Bonus Question: What gets in the way of fulfilling these desires?
This is an important question. Dreaming and hoping and writing it down only brings your desires into your awareness. It is an essential first step. The next one involves taking another step toward it. This is where we often get stuck. We may take the first few steps, but find ourselves overwhelmed, disappointed, or just pulled back to where we put our attention before. It can be damn hard to move toward a great life, especially if you have been beaten down by life. But, it can be done! You just have to work with what comes up in the way of what you envision for your life. It could be calling you in a different direction or something needs to be transformed. What comes up or what blocks your desires can often be just as significant in the process of achieving goals than the accomplishments themselves.
Example:
Let’s use the same example of completing a 5k run. Let’s say you start off doing good. You are running for 2 weeks, every other day, slowly increasing distance. But then you have an awful fight with your boyfriend and you miss a day. The next day you are upset and get consumed in fixing what caused you to fight. After 4 days, you realize you haven’t ran and hold some resentment toward your boyfriend. The next day, you fight again and you cannot be fully present with what he says because you are holding resentment. Now, he is to blame for your inactivity and your relationship is none the better.
In this simplified example, the desire to complete a 5k (for whatever reason) is consumed by the energy that is poured into the relationship. Instead of saying, the relationship gets in the way of your fitness, the hinderance is more likely holding resentment toward a partner and not taking responsibility for your goals (maybe not taking responsibility for your part in the fight also). What get’s in the way is the festering of thoughts not spoken, giving one’s power away to someone else, and not having enough energy focused into the desire behind completing a 5k.
So to complete a 5k, you would have to work on taking responsibility for your energy and your focus, while also verbalizing this to your partner so they understand why you weren’t fully listening. By verbalizing what is happening for you, while recognizing that your fight wasn’t truly what prevented you from running you clear the air, so you can better listen to him and redirect some energy to the desire behind why you want to complete a 5k.
Allowing Complexity & Being Flexible
As you may see in this example, many different components can be wrapped up in the goals in our lives. If you have a large goal, one that is quite far from where you currently are, you have to be willing to allow the details to change, while holding on to your reason for going for your goal. Challenges will come up requiring you to shift how you go about your goal which may change your final outcome, but doesn’t always change the reason, the why behind your goal. This is why getting to heart of your goals is so important: the reasons are the fuel that sustains the long, unknown, challenging road ahead. This is creating goals with soul.
Hope you have aha moments and clarity visits,
Kristina